Abstract

Advances in compact solid-state lasers using diode-laser pump sources have renewed interest in rare-earth activated insulating crystals. A variety of schemes have been developed for creating new laser wavelengths throughout the near IR and visible. Many of these involve frequency conversion via energy transfer between ions of the same or different species. In such systems, changes in luminescence lines with < 1 cm^-1 widths occur simultaneously over a range of thousands of wavenumbers in time scales in the range of 1 µs to 1 ms. Hence, there is a need for a single technique which captures these changes in the form of spectral "movies" having adequate time resolution, frequency resolution, and frequency range. An immediate practical return from such a technique would be in facilitating the optimization of dopant concentrations, since a variety of concentration-dependent processes compete with the desired energy-transfer phenomena. A benefit of fundamental interest is in revealing complex transfer phenomena which test existing models.

© 1995 Optical Society of America